uld work on for that chance. He tried to evoke
it by all means possible and impossible. He had given himself over to
fury and anger, and, what was worse, to impotent anger!

During the latter part of this day he had been trying different
numbers--numbers selected arbitrarily--and how many of them can scarcely
be imagined. Had he had the time, he would not have shrunk from plunging
into the millions of combinations of which the ten symbols of numeration
are capable. He would have given his whole life to it at the risk of
going mad before the year was out. Mad! was he not that already? He had
had the idea that the document might be read through the paper, and so
he turned it round and exposed it to the light, and tried it in that
way.

Nothing! The numbers already thought of, and which he tried in this new
way, gave no result. Perhaps the document read backward, and the last
letter was really the first, for the author would have done this had he
wished to make the reading more difficult.

Nothing! The new combination only furnished a series of letters just as
enigmatic.

At eight o'clock in the evening Jarriquez, with his face in his hands,
knocked up, worn out mentally and physically, had neither strength to
move, to speak, to think, or to associate one idea with another.

Suddenly a noise was heard outside. Almost immediately, notwithstanding
his formal orders, the door of his study was thrown open. Benito and
Manoel were before him, Benito looking dreadfully pale, and Manoel
supporting him, for the unfortunate young man had hardly strength to
support himself.

The magistrate quickly arose.

"What is it, gentlemen? What do you want?" he asked.

"The cipher! the cipher!" exclaimed Benito, mad with grief--"the cipher
of the document."

"Do you know it, then?" shouted the judge.

"No, sir," said Manoel. "But you?"

"Nothing! nothing!"

"Nothing?" gasped Benito, and in a paroxysm of despair he took a knife
from his belt and would have plunged it into his breast had not the
judge and Manoel jumped forward and managed to disarm him.

"Benito," said Jarriquez, in a voice which he tried to keep calm, "if
you father cannot escape the expiation of a crime which is not his, you
could do something better than kill yourself."

"What?" said Benito.

"Try and save his life!"

"How?"

"That is for you to discover," answered the magistrate, "and not for me
to say."

CHAPTER XVI. PREPARATIONS

ON THE FOLL